The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.211

v1.c26.211

Such is the account of the Brāhmans which Strabo extracted from Megasthenes. It does not completely agree either with the picture drawn in Indian literary sources or with present-day practice. Its discrepancies may be in part due to the misunderstandings of a foreigner; in part they may reflect local varieties of practice in the fourth century B.C. It will always be interesting as recording the impression of ancient India upon a Greek mind. The account which Megasthenes gave of the other kind of philosophers, the ‘Sarmanes,’ is more problematic. Their name seems certainly to represent the Sanskrit *çramaṇa*, a term which was commonly applied to Buddhist ascetics. It has therefore been thought that we have in the Sarmanes of Megasthenes the first mention of Buddhists by a Western writer. In the description however there is nothing distinctively Buddhist, and the term *çramaṇa* is used in Indian literature of non-Buddhist ascetics. If therefore the people to whom Megasthenes heard the term applied were Buddhists, he must have known so little about them that he could only describe them by features which were equally found in various sorts of Hindu holy men. His description applies to Brāhman ascetics rather than to Buddhists.